On Wednesday the Education Minister, Paul Givan MLA, visited Castle Gardens and was accompanied by the MP for Strangford Jim Shannon.
The visit gave me the opportunity to make the Minister aware of three key areas of focus in our school, as well as some of the ongoing frustrations we all share relating to finance, SEN support and maintenance.
We visited the Speech Classes, showcasing the success story that is our Specialist Provision in Mainstream Schools (SPiMS). This is a hot topic in Education with a struggle to meet the demand for specialist placements between schools and EA ongoing. Mrs Hutchinson as class teacher and SENCO had the opportunity to share first hand her experiences and challenges with the EA statutory process, and the amazing progress that the pupils make in their short time in our classes. The Minister was asked several probing questions by the pupils before giving him the opportunity to take part in a phonics lesson- yes a systematic synthetic approach for those in the know!
The Minister's second topic was to discuss our sporting opportunities offered to the pupils and our efforts to improve the surfaces within our grounds that are used for sports and games.
Before trying our Golf Ireland activities, demonstrated by P6 pupils, the Minister heard about our connections to Ards Rugby club, Ards Hockey Club, North Down Cricket Club, NI Athletics and Ards Football club, and our efforts to organise hockey and netball blitzes.
Our frustrations were fully heard in relation to how progress on our resurfacing and enhancement project has been stalled by EA's lack of procedure and apparent priority given to SPiMS, even though we have had 2 for a decade. Hopefully this meeting will lead to some movement in the near future.
Our final engagement related to the interagency work and the provision of wellbeing and anti-bullying workshops for 2000 pupils in P4 to P7 classes in every school in Ards and Comber.
In the absence of any wellbeing funding being available, I was able to secure funding from Ark Housing and Radius Housing that provided online sessions for schools in every sector in our local community. This provided anti-bullying workshops for P4 and P5 in 12 schools and wellbeing workshops for P6 and P7 in 12 schools. Sometimes efforts need to reach beyond our school gates and, whilst my primary objective will always be the pupils in Castle Gardens, it is important that all kids get the support they need even if it is not prioritised in budgets or political discussions.
This visit gave us an opportunity to demonstrate the solution focused approach we take in Castle Gardens and an opportunity to showcase to the Minister three of the reasons our enrolment continues to grow.
Menu
